Simenon Quotes & Sayings

My parents were interested in history and the world. My father read Graham Greene and Georges Simenon and was a strong trade unionist and Labour supporter. — Robert Harris

The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried farther, and people in their beds could feel, as they did every night, the vibration of the ground as buses rolled past. — Georges Simenon

Madame ... gloatingly savored her words as earlier she had savored her pig's trotter. — Georges Simenon

If each one of us could make just one other happy, the whole world would know happiness. — Georges Simenon

Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of sensing a Sunday from his bed, without even having to open his eyes. — Georges Simenon

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world. — Georges Simenon

What Zograffi would have to realize was that Elie had come to the end, and there was no farther-on for him. Nothing. Emptiness.
They could do anything to him they liked. They could prescribe any punishment. But they mustn't force him to leave. That was beyond him. he would rather sit down on the curbstone and let himself die there in the sun.
He was tired. For the others, for a man like Zograffi, did that word have the terrible significance it had for him? — Georges Simenon

During his time with the French army, years before, one of the sergeants had explained to the younger mercenaries the trick of falling asleep the night before a battle. Make yourself comfortable, examine your conscience, and make a good Act of Contrition. Father Hugo says that in time of war, even if there is no priest to shrive you, your sins can be forgiven this way. Since you cannot commit sins while asleep
not even you, Simenon!
you will awake in a state of grace, ready to fall on the bastards. And with nothing to look forward to but victory or heaven
how can you be afraid. — Diana Gabaldon

I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men. — Georges Simenon

We are all potentially characters in a novel
with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full. — Georges Simenon

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy. — Georges Simenon

My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may - need is the word I use - to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed. — Roger Ebert

At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces.
Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows. — Georges Simenon

The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour. — Georges Simenon

He had read endless books, he had digested them, pondered over them. Day by day, year after year, he had turned over all the problems of human beings. Yet there were all sorts of simple things he didn't know how to do: he couldn't even walk into an inn and sit down at a table. — Georges Simenon

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words. — Georges Simenon

We live in a time when writers do not always have barriers around them — Georges Simenon

Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person. — Georges Simenon

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication. — Georges Simenon

I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible. — Georges Simenon

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow. — Georges Simenon

That feeling about trains, for instance. Of course he had long outgrown the boyish glamour of the steam-engine. Yet there was something that had an appeal for him in trains, especially in night-trains, which always put queer, vaguely improper notions in his head - though he would have been hard put to it to define them. Also he had an impression that those who leave by night-trains leave forever - an impression heightened the previous night by his glimpse of those Italians piled into their carriage like emigrants — Georges Simenon

It just happened. As though a moment comes when it's both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made. — Georges Simenon

He now understood deathbed dramas. Everybody thinks about death. But only one person thinks about it for himself. The others know that in the morning the sun will come through the blinds and their coffee will be served." From "The Reckoning — Georges Simenon

For 30 years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals, — Georges Simenon

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world. — Georges Simenon

They never addressed each other by name, nor were they in the habit of exchanging endearments. What was the point, since both felt that, in many ways, they were one person? — Georges Simenon

If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily. — Georges Simenon

His mouth open, he fell asleep, because a man always falls asleep in the end. One weeps, one shrieks, one rages, one despairs, and then one eats and sleeps as if nothing had happened. — Georges Simenon

I have made love to ten thousand women. — Georges Simenon

And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity. — Georges Simenon

A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother. — Georges Simenon

It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around it. I arrived from between two of these mountains, I looked at the lake and the moon, and that was it, nothing else happened. — Georges Simenon

How were you supposed to feel when you adored the novels of Jules Verne, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Simenon and loads of others who then turned out to be complete bastards? — Jean-Michel Guenassia

I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong. — Georges Simenon

She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light. She came forward like a film star, or rather like the ideal woman in an adolescent's dream. — Georges Simenon

It was the serene cheerfulness of a man who has no nightmares, who feels at peace with himself and everyone else. They [Americans] were almost all of them like that. And it definitely got Maigret's back up. It made him think of clothing that was too neat, too clean, too well-pressed. — Georges Simenon

The change in the girl's face was more subtle, almost invisible; it was not joy, there was no sparkle, but something like a serene contentment. It was as though she had ripened, as though there were a growing plenitude in her, never there before. — Georges Simenon

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink. — Georges Simenon

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference. — Georges Simenon

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters - I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world. — Georges Simenon